Just when you thought the revolving door couldn’t spin any faster, here comes the 5-day RTO mandate starting 1/1/2026. Truist-wide hammer drop, no carve-outs. Grant spilled it to a handful Audit earlier today, claiming a bunch of folks will be thrilled and floating “feedback” that’s DOA. Delusional, out of touch, or just the yes-man script from a guy with zero audit experience who got dropped in to mop up DD's disaster?
Stings worse when you zoom out: nearly half (44%) of the department was hired over the past 12 months—all under the latest “intentional flexibility” BS promising at least one WFH day. D-mb as $hit, especially after it got chipped away from three days (or whatever loose vibe it was post-COVID), to two, now this—straight zero. Crystal clear they don’t give a d@mn about teammates.
And for those whose teams are scattered across offices? Purportedly the buildings won’t be total ghost towns, but good luck if you’re showing up with a floor full of random Audit bodies and zero from your actual team. Still grinding through 1+ hour commutes, just to fire up Teams for the exact same virtual pull-ups you’d have from home. Wasted time, zero upside—except awkward small talk with strangers over the Keurig.
But the real gut-punch is the burnout carving us up. Teammates who used to light up the room with laughs? Now overworked zombies, stressed to the brink, ducking out only for bathroom runs—no time for chit-chat, in-office or after. And yeah, it shows: more than a few have aged a decade in a few years, faces etched with the grind. Our team’s a powder keg, with mismatched placements forcing the rest to pickup endless slack amid accelerated deadlines, while many of our counterparts coast. Describing it as a dumpster fire is kind; we’re a skeleton crew teetering on collapse.
While many of us may have been hanging on—some because d@mn, we love the actual work; others because options feel slim right now—and props to the handful of directors who still give a d@mn, even that crew’s thinning out fast. But let’s be real: this grind’s unsustainable for the long haul, and 5 day RTO’s just the shove over the edge for too many. Expect a wave of us dusting off resumes soon, though I imagine that's the entire purpose of the new mandate. I'm sure this isn't isolated to Audit and that other areas are probably staring down the same sinking dread, swapping wild rumors, or scraping for silver linings that don't exist.